Green Lantern #49

It's too bad that John Stewart has been relegated to fill-in status in this title. He had such lofty promise as the partner for Hal Jordan in sector 2814, but at this point we never see the guy. This issue catches us up on how the rebooted Marine sniper (he used to be a jazz-loving, peaceful guy) is dealing with Blackest Night.

Turns out things are about the same for John Stewart as for everyone else. He flies down to the zombified planet Xanshi, the world he didn't save back in the Cosmic Odyssey crossover of the 80s. The entire population is rising thanks to a whole slew of Black Lantern rings, but Stewart manages to fight them off by creating a green army of American soldiers. There's an interesting flashback where Stewart blows away a bunch of insurgents in an unnamed Middle Eastern conflict, but again, turning him into a bad-ass soldier seems weird. I guess he fits in more with guys like Magog and the Shield now, as a soldiery-attitude hero. That's ok, there aren't a lot of them, it is just interesting that the military is now John Stewart's defining characteristic.

Ed Benes does a decent job this issue. I was particularly impressed that he spent so much time giving Stewart's green army such different looks. Their uniforms, weapons, and facial expressions were all different and unique, I appreciated the attention to detail. I like to think that Stewart was creating an army of soldiers he actually knew.

There's a neat backup where Jean Loring explains to Mera and the Atom that Nekron is a guardian of the dark, a guardian of the absence of life. She tries to justify all the killing and such by explaining that life is an aberration to the universe, so Nekron needs to clean up all that mess.

Fair